seeder, or a roller, or a feed chopper. Now, with
a washing-machine it is different. A washing-machine can only wash
clothes, and his wife has always been able to get the clothes washed
some way. The farmer does not see any return for his ten dollars and a
half, and so he passes up the machine. Besides this, his mother never
used one, and always managed to keep the clothes clean, too, and that
settles it!

The outside farm work has progressed wonderfully, but the indoor farm
work is done in exactly the same way as it was twenty-five years ago,
with the possible exception of the cream-separator.

Many a farmyard, with its binders, rakes, drills, rollers, gasoline
engine, fanning-mill, and steam-plow looks as if someone had been
giving a machinery shower; but in the kitchen you will find the old
washboard and dasher churn, which belonged to the same era as the
reaping hook and tallow candle. The women still carry the water in a
pail from a pump outside, wash the dishes on the kitchen table, and
carry the water out again in a pail; although out in the barn the water
is pumped by a windmill, or a gasoline engine. The outside work on the
farm is done by horse, steam, or gasoline, but the indoor work is all
done by woman-power.

And then, when the woman-power gives out, as it does many times, under
the strain of hard work and childbearing, the whole neighborhood mourns
and says: "God's ways are past finding out."

I remember once attending the funeral of a woman who had been doing the
work for a family of six children and three hired men, and she had not
even a baby carriage to make her work lighter. When the last baby was
three days old, just in threshing time, she died. Suddenly, and
without warning, the power went off, and she quit without notice. The
bereaved husband was the most astonished man in the world. He had
never known Jane to do a thing like that before, and he could not get
over it. In threshing time, too!

"I don't know what could have happened to Jane--a strong young woman
like her," he said over and over again.

We all gathered at the house that afternoon and paid our respects to
the deceased sister, and we were all very sorry for poor Ed. We said
it was a terrible way for a poor man to be left.

The chickens came close to the dining-room door, and looked in,
inquisitively. They could not understand why she did not come out and
feed them, and when they were driven away they retreated in